Machine type communication (MTC) data flow may be characterized by the exchange of small data. A services capability server (SCS) may be required to trigger a device to perform some action. When a device receives a trigger, it may respond with a small data packet from the application. An application-specific packet may be sent to the SCS over a control plane by the device. The trigger may be provided to the SCS in a trigger report. Such a feature may avoid the need for more activity on a data plane.
The SCS may be assigned a trigger quota. The SCS may be restricted from exceeding a given number of trigger submissions per unit of time. The quota may be SCS-specific (subscription based). However, a mechanism for enforcing and/or maintaining the quota is not currently available. A home subscriber server (HSS) may maintain the quota. When an MTC interworking function (MTC-IWF) authorizes a trigger request, the HSS may check the trigger quota and decrement it accordingly. However, the HSS may have to be queried before every trigger request, and the MTC-IWF may not be able to avoid HSS queries by caching subscriber data. Thus, the MTC-IWF may have to authorize every trigger with the HSS.